Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The 'Turnaround' Point

An article over at Press the Buttons exams one of the more prominent level designs patterns featured in the Mega Man series known simply as the 'turnaround' point.

Described as the point where "the path will force [the protagonist] to drop into a room from above, make a quick jog to the left, drop down to the ground, and continue onwards to the right", can be found in not only practically every classic series game, but a number of other Capcom 2D sidescrollers, too. Have a look at some of the other 'turnaround points' from the classic series:

i just noticed an error. it's not your fault, it's the same way on press the buttons. they make the statement that you make a quick jog right, and then fall down, and continue right. that's NOT right. litteraly. you make a quick jog LEFT, then fall, THEN move right.

common sense level design, without the turnaround you'd drop down on the right edge of the screen, wasting more than half the screen. Similarly there's quite a few screens where you drop in from the top right, move across the screen, and drop out the lower left, same tactic

I've noticed this myself, but the majority of the time there is a "checkpoint" placed there, or it's to change scrolling. You can only add so much variety to such a linear platformer, after all. It might also have something to do with consumption of RAM on the cartridge limiting the amount of screens - that's why there are the shutter doors for bosses after all. This element is also in Metroid.